Materials Services Division Managers' Meeting Minutes for July 17, 2008

Materials Services Managers Monthly Meeting

July 17, 2008; 8:00; Downtown Library 3rd Floor Director’s Conference Room

Janet Brooks – Chair, Pauline Rodriguez-Atkins, Heidi Johnson, Karen Marriott

Agenda:

Cataloging Update - Pauline Rodriguez-Atkins

Meetings and training attended:

Jill – OLA SSRT, June 19

Ursula – United Way, July 9

Pauline is very grateful to the Cataloging staff for their efforts to help keep ILL operational during her and/or Karen Davis’s absences. Several staff have worked in ILL at different times, while the rest have taken on extra work to keep Cataloging going. Without this great group and it cooperation, it would not have been possible for Pauline to have been gone.

Aaron and Clyde assisted with the RE reference interfiling project on July 14. Karen Marriott has noted that their help was much appreciated.

Ursula, along with Sharon Bish and Ruby Soutiere, has completed recommendations for changes to the US Depository selection profile and forwarded them to Karen Marriott.

Ursula job shadowed Sharon Bish on July 9.

Jana continues to attend Leadership MLS activities.

Steven will continue to work in ILL one day each week until further notice.

Cataloging staff have continued to assist Tech Processing with unboxing materials shipments as needed.

Pauline had a phone interview on July 10 with Chad Dolis of Right Management to discuss performance standards for MSD Technicians.

Cataloging’s work output increased dramatically in June; the month’s output was among the three highest months in all categories. 20% more titles were cataloged than in June 2007; 47% more titles had copies added; and 24% more new barcodes were printed. This end-of-year spike is unusual, but not unprecedented.

Overall, Cataloging output for FY08 is very close to that of FY07, as illustrated below. (Chart in attached document)

The decrease in the number of replacement barcodes produced is partially due to the fact that Cataloging had only one Materials Services Division Technician for much of the year.

Interlibrary Loan Update - Pauline Rodriguez-Atkins

ILL is amazing!! During FY08, the department submitted 6,169 requests to borrow materials for MLS customers, and filled 4,891 of them, for an 80% average borrow fill rate. They also received 24,144 requests to lend MLS materials to other libraries, and filled 10,696 of those, for an average loan fill rate of 41%. The fill rate would be even higher except for the fact that no materials were lent during July or the first half of August 2007.

ILL has received a total of 635 more requests than in FY07, but has filled 4,477 more (and handled a total of 15,587 materials in the process)!

Pauline and the ILL staff (especially Brittany) would like to express their utmost gratitude to Cataloging staff members who have assisted while the department is short staffed. Thanks to Steven, Veronica, Paula, and Jana, with a special shout out to Steven and Veronica. Pauline also applauds Brittany for doing a great job in this tough situation.

Trans-Amigos continues to be erratic. Delivery time varies each day. The number of packages received can be less than 10 or up to 50 on a given day. However, ILL is grateful for the deliveries.

Pauline is working with ODL and AutoGraphics to change all MLS holdings in the OLTN catalog to the Downtown library code, YZKH. Hopefully, this will reduce duplicate requests and make statistics keeping easier. There are still some bugs to be worked out, however.

Pauline has contacted Kay Bauman about handling ILL requests for RE while the library is closed. It was agreed to suspend submitting requests for RE customers beginning on July 21, and resume submitting them on approximately August 11. This should help to assure that materials to be sent to RE are not received while the library is closed. ILL staff will not reserve materials held only at RE from August 4 until August 18.

Technical Processing - Update Heidi Johnson

So far, the runs in July have been on average 636 labels per day as compared to June’s total average of 716. Technical Processing currently receives an average of 30 boxes of materials a day which is slightly less than June’s total average of 34. However, the first FY09 orders are starting to come in and materials receipt is picking up again.

Many TP staff have been out for various reasons, some scheduled and some not. The processors are current on all “Rush” materials, but are behind more than usual on the non-rush materials. The oldest non-rush materials waiting to be processed are from the run 8 days ago. Not only were there staff shortages to deal with, but the processors were also reprocessing the books returned from the bindery. Jeanie from MSL came to help one day with processing DVDs, and Cataloging staff and the MSD Tech have been very helpful with unboxing shipments when they were available. Many thanks go to all who have helped out in TP! Steven, the MSD Tech, is now helping to process some of the oldest materials during the time he is in the CH building. Heidi also is helping to process as time permits. TP hopes to catch up very shortly, now that most staff are back at work.

Heidi and Loretta were testing 10 applicants for the processor position during the week of July 7. Out of the 10 that came in for the test, 5 passed and were requested to come back for an interview during the week of July 14. Heidi and Janet have interviewed three so far, with one more scheduled for Thursday afternoon. One applicant did not respond to repeated attempts to schedule an interview. Heidi and Janet both feel confident that the position will be filled shortly. Heidi hopes to have the new processor in place by the start of the August 11 pay period.

Most of the B&T accounts are still current. Heidi is currently working with CFS to take care of the misapplication of funds from about a year ago. CFS claims that MLS paid an invoice twice; however, one of the check numbers they reference does not appear to be MLS’s check. Heidi will continue to pursue this matter with the Business Office and CFS.

All Ingram accounts continue to be current.

MLS has been assigned new customer service reps. with Random House and Thorndike Books.

During a recent emergency in the CH Library it was discovered that the CH building was unable to dial 911 from their new phones. IT has been notified and they will look into the reason for this as soon as Anne comes back on Wednesday.

Materials Selection Update - Janet Brooks

Library Visits

During June Selectors conducted an annual library visit to BE and a 6-month visit to WA.

During July selectors are conducting an annual visit to CH and a 6-month to BI.

During August selectors will conduct an annual visit to CT and a 6-month visit to DN. Their annual visits to the Extensions may be placed on hold due to the move of RE.

Budgets

Selection staff completed FY08 with little difficulty. They were able to transfer orders from List 1 of FY09 when it was discovered that there was additional funds to encumber during the last week.

FY09 is well underway. Additional funds were added to the AV budgets to help increase volumes and hopefully increase circulation in these areas.

Right Management

Janet reviewed MSL appraisals prepared by Right Management and had a consultation with Chad, one of the staff with the firm on July 2nd.

Tech Processing Interviews

Janet assisted Heidi with interviews for the Technical Processing position on July 15, 16 and 17.

RE Reference Collection

Janet, Denise and Lisa assisted with the tagging and interfiling of RE’s reference collection on July 14.

Basement/Gifts and Transfers

There continues to be problems with the pick up and delivery of the boxes from the MSL basement to CAT. Janet again asked Patrick to try to get the boxes picked up and delivered in timely manner. Maintenance is supposed to pick up material from the basement on Saturdays when they make the deliveries from the libraries.

Janet asked Pauline to let her know if they are not receiving boxes on a regular basis. MSL sends on average about 3-5 boxes of transfers and 1-3 boxes of gifts each week.

Meetings/Workshops Attended

In the past month Janet was interviewed by Angela/CH and Jerod/OR who are both attending library school and are taking the collection development class. Jerod is arranging a job shadow session with Ruby in August.

Julie met with the V2R group on July 14, 2008

Julie job shadowed Steve Jenkins/BC on July 2 and July 3.

Janet attended the Safety Committee Meeting on July 8

Julie attended the United Way Committee meeting on July 9

Lisa attended the Prepare training on July 9 at ED.

Kim, Ruby and Lisa attended the reference tools workshop on July 15.

Manager on AVL

Janet announced she will be on AVL from July 22nd through July 31st. She’ll return to work on Aug 4.

Julie Ballou will be in charge while Janet is out of the office.

Administration Update - Karen Marriott

Service Center

Service Center construction contract on the July commission agenda.

There will be no ground breaking ceremony scheduled to help move the project forward.

Karen plans to meet with Heidi and Pauline beginning this fall to review the move and procedure changes with staff.

Job Descriptions

Karen reported that the system needs to review job descriptions and update every 6-7 years.

She asked managers to look at various job descriptions and provide updates within the next year.

Some Cataloging and Technical Processing positions will not be reviewed until after the move to the service center, as some of their duties and processes may change.

Northwest

AdTeam has had several meetings regarding the NW library.

Work is on track and they hope to award a construction contract in August or September.

Edmond

Administration has had several meetings with Edmond city officials to discuss the feasibility of a new library in Edmond.

Administration is providing them with data for cost estimates to the city.

Reference Interfiled with Circulating

The project of interfiling reference with the circulating collection has been completed at DC and RE. NW reference collection will be interfiled with the circulating, as will the collections at CH and VI.

TP will handle adding labels to new reference material for these agencies in the future.

MSL will be responsible for getting labels on NW material. Karen will supply the labels.

The location code will continue to be REF, and the loan period 0, so there will be no impact on Cataloging.

Policy and Procedures Committee

The committee continues to work on several policy updates. They are currently working on the mileage/travel policies and updating fee schedules.

Several policies were approved at the last commission meeting and are available on the intranet.

Right Management

Karen has a phone consultation with Right Management soon.

She asked for feedback from managers regarding their appraisal changes and any concerns they had.

Safety Committee - Janet Brooks

Janet reported that all MLS employees are required to do the blood borne pathogens training during the 3rd quarter. Staff can watch for a special PowerPoint on the Intranet or can go to the Safety Training section and review it from there. Staff must also review the Exposure Control information found in the safety notebook. The amount of time entered on the Safety Training form should reflect the actual time staff spend reading the manual and watching the PowerPoint, so time will vary. Staff still need to have 30 minutes of training during the 3rd quarter, so if their blood borne pathogens and manual review do not equal 30 minutes, they need to do additional training.

New staff members who have already done blood borne pathogens training for the year are not required to do it again.

The Safety Committee reviewed the facility checklists and will make some minor changes to the form so it is easy to determine if action was taken on any safety issues.

Collection Workshop - All

Stacy asked if the fall collection workshop will continue to be 3 days. There will be some changes because of the mentoring program Janet and Karen are working on.

Managers decided that we will offer the fall workshop as a 3 day workshop and include much of the workshop as previously offered. At the August meeting,

managers will review the workshop agenda and make any changes to the format and some content.

Karen and Janet will plan to meet with Materials Mentors probably in September.

Gift DVDs - Pauline Rodriguez-Atkins

An issue regarding the need to catalog gift DVDs on separate bib records was discussed.

If a gift DVD does not match the existing bib record, cataloging staff will notify the appropriate selector who will then determine if additional copies can be supplied that match the gift, or decide not to add the gift.

Pauline will send the criteria for determining whether a DVD may be added to an existing record to MSL, to assist selectors.

Miscellaneous

Pauline mentioned that the OLA Technical Services Roundtable workshop in the fall will cover ILL and collection management.

Next meeting scheduled for August 21, 2008 at Capitol Hill. Heidi will chair